Both Martin and I waved good-bye as his primary subjective flitted off, leaving his proxxi to guide his body home. We sat silently for a few minutes, enjoying the sea, sky, and silence.
Martin looked at me and then looked down awkwardly, struggling with something. “We need to have a chat. I want to understand what’s going on with you.”
I looked away. “Sure, I’ve wanted to talk to you, too.… ” Maybe it’s time to bring up the gorilla in the room, I was thinking, but just then my metasenses started tingling. “But maybe in a few minutes?”
Detaching my primary subjective point-of-view from my body, I spun it far out into the Pacific. This viewpoint coasted in just above the water, following a monster swell making its way toward us. It was huge, at least a dozen feet in height, even in the open ocean. It sprayed and frothed angrily as I followed it, surging powerfully toward the glimmering speck of Atopia in the distance.
I snapped hard back into my body. Using a phantom, I punched up a visual overlay of how the wave would be breaking in a few minutes. “This is the one I’ve been waiting for! I totally want to talk, but could I catch this wave first?”
“No problem,” Martin laughed. He pointed at the simulation. “Oh yeah, that’s gonna be huge!”
The wave would peak at nearly forty feet and generate an almond-shaped pipe that would continuously sweep past the northern crescent for nearly two miles. The system selected an optimal drop-in point, and I quickly plotted some possible surf paths. It was a big wave, and I’d have to travel fast to catch it right. The triangular fin of a shark I’d commandeered appeared, slicing through the water behind me, and I reached out to catch it and began racing across the water.
“Nice,” said Martin, admiring the path I’d decided on in the simulation graphic hanging between us. Skimming the water, the wind barely ruffled his hair. “So you’re going to pull a dead-man stall, switch back to hide in the barrel, and then finish with a rocket Tchaikovsky and back-hang two?”
“That’s the plan,” I replied with a grin. “Can you switch to the back with everyone else, so I can get this show on the road?”
Martin nodded and disappeared, and I let go of the shark’s fin, leaning forward on my board as I began paddling to the drop-in. My social cloud started buzzing about my impending ride, my dimstim stats surging as masses of people stimswitched into me to enjoy it.
It was a funny feeling, knowing that thousands of people were inside my skin. I couldn’t feel anything physically, but I could sense it, and it sent shivers down my spine.
I began quickening, and the world dropped away as my senses sharpened.
With smarticles infused throughout pssi-kids’ nervous systems from birth, we’d quickly picked up on the trick of “quickening” by using smarticles to accelerate the conduction of nerve signals along their axons. We could literally amp up the speed of our nervous systems on command, but only in short bursts as we depleted the stored energy in the smarticles and, more problematically, began to overheat our brains.
Quickening the body was one thing, but quickening the mind was entirely something else. It had to be managed in a very controlled fashion so one didn’t lose conscious coherence in the seat of the mind, where it all came together. Like anything, it took time, patience, and training to build up this capacity, and when it came to quickening, like surfing, I was one of the best.
With each breath, I concentrated on quickening, feeling the world slow down as I sped up. Switching my visual field into surround mode, I closed my eyes as my visual cortex adjusted itself to a 360-degree view.
Accelerating my paddling tempo, I focused on the ripples of water coming through my water-sense, pushing my speed to match the incoming monster. It began to grow behind me, the sensation of it expanding up and into my skin, surging toward and into me.
My board angled forward, skimming faster and faster. With a final stroke, I opened my eyes and grabbed my board, popping up onto it and leaning forward to accelerate. The wave urged me on. It wasn’t really behind me—the wave was me. I felt it swelling through my water-sense, as if my body was expanding and peaking, with little bits of me frothing off the top as it crested.
The wave began to break, and my board sped down its face. Slowing as I neared its base, I stepped to the back of the board, sinking into the water and almost stalling. I smiled, waving to the crowds on the beach, and a collective gasp went up as they watched the monster booming down behind me.
An instant before disaster, I jumped forward and cut the board back into the wave, sailing up its rushing face. As it roared around the northern crescent, I started snapping a series of turns back and forth off its top. Nearing my finale, I finished with an acrobatic turn that dropped me freefalling into its thundering maw.
The crowds on the distant beach squealed with excitement as my silhouette disappeared.
Finally, leaning forward, I accelerated away from the maelstrom at the back of the barrel. A crazily spinning, translucent tunnel opened up ahead of me, revealing bright daylight beyond. Easing further forward, I sensed the final collapse of the wave, so I stood up and walked toward the front of my board and turned around.
Tchaikovsky started playing loudly in my dimstim, and I closed my eyes to begin air conducting for my audience. With just my toes on the nose of the board, back-hanging my heels off it, a powerful jet of water from the collapsing tube shot me backward out of the mouth of the barrel.
Opening my eyes, I lowered the volume on Tchaikovsky and turned around to walk toward the back of the board. Mad applause from the thousands of dimstimmers who’d enjoyed the ride rang out in the multiverse. The world returned to normal time as I released my quickening, and I felt the burning heat within my body begin to ease off.
Sighing happily, I sank into the water, straddling my board to float gently in the swells again.
Martin reappeared on the nose of my board and gave me a little golf clap. “Nice show, buddy. That was awesome!”
“Thank you, thank you very much.” I wiped the water from my face and looked back at Martin and the tourists still clapping on the beach.
I couldn’t resist showing off again.
The water around me began to thicken up as I summoned tens of millions of tiny zooplankton from the depths below. I kept them near me when surfing, as a safety net in case something went wrong. With a few carefully placed kicks, I levitated out of the water, forcing millions of my little friends to treadmill their hardest just at the right point to support each step. I stood up and took a few steps across the water, then bowed to the crowds with a flourish.
This brought gasps and more pointing from the tourists—he can walk on water!
Sinking back down, I grabbed my board and dispersed my little helpers. Martin was shaking his head, grinning widely.
“That was a bit much,” he laughed, but it felt forced. We didn’t get out together much anymore.
“Buddy, you need to lighten up,” I said to him. “Live a little.”
Immediately, I regretted my choice of words, but Martin didn’t notice anything. I slicked back my hair again, trying to stop the saltwater from streaming into my eyes.
“You want to come camping with me, Willy, and Sid later?” I asked after a pause.
“I’m invited?”
“Why else would I ask!”
“That’d be great,” Martin responded brightly, and then his smile faded. “I worry about you sometimes.”
I nodded. “Still want to have that chat?”